Andy Rooney bids farewell to ’60 Minutes’

Curmudgeonly commentator Andy Rooney, who lived in the Rowayton section of Norwalk, will bid farewell to “60 Minutes” when he makes his final appearance on the show Sunday, according to CBS.

Rooney, 92, will announce his departure in his regular essay at the end of the program, where he has been featured more than 1,096 times since 1978. The program will feature a segment in which Rooney looks back on his career, CBS said in a statement.

Rooney began his stint on “60 Minutes,” the CBS TV news magazine, in July 1978 with an essay about misleading reporting on automobile fatalities on Independence Day weekend.

“Car for car,” Rooney argued, “it’s one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace.” And since “fewer people are watching television over the Fourth, I suppose fewer die of boredom.”

He became a regular contributor, delivering sometimes folksy, sometimes cantankerous commentaries on everyday life.